Miriam shot to her feet, her nightgown flapping. “Gabriel said five twenty,” she said.

The bells were ringing four.

“Choir!” she sang, in the real and the aethereal.

One hundred and thirty-nine nuns and novices leapt from their beds, put their feet into sheepskin shoes, and ran for the chapel, leaving prie-dieux and psalters and paternosters, hairbrushes and combs and mirrors and beds and bolsters behind them.

Every one of them knew this was the hour, and like soldiers, they were ready.

Mostly ready.

On the floor of the chapel, two middle-aged women were already singing, working their way through the end of the early matins. Despite the air of crisis outside the chapel, inside it was dark and calm, lit by a single vigil candle, which reflected just a little from gilt and gold and polished silver and brass; a hint of beauty like a brief sight of a veiled woman’s face.

Sister Katheryn, a slight, birdlike figure, was already at her place; their lead voice in the right-hand choir. By ancient tradition, the abbey had two choirs—for special feasts they sang together—and a dozen Alban composers vied to write them masses. Most days, only one choir sang, in a strict rota.

This morning, both choirs were coming in, and Sister Elisabeth stepped up to the bema of the left choir, her face rapt in concentration. Sister Elisabeth was tall, broad shouldered, her long fingers caressing the jeweled cross at her throat while her lips moved through the last invocation of the morning prayer with Sister Katheryn across the aisle.

Miriam went to her place. She peered into the aethereal and saw the mist gathering around the gate, and indeed, she looked through her mirror at the face of the gate itself.

There was light behind it.

And pressure. The pressure was building. So far, the wards handled it easily, but a curious amount of ops was being drained, even with the improvements that Sister Amicia had built into the systems.

She raised a hand and pointed at Sister Elisabeth.

Sister Elisabeth took the time to finish the Holy Office. She sang the Ave Maria, and Sister Katheryn’s voice soared with her. Many other sisters, just coming in, took up the well-known words, and Miriam channeled the power, effortlessly, into the wards.

The pressure against them suddenly exploded.

In a heartbeat, half of her stored reserves were squandered in the wards; almost as much ops as Thorn had managed to drain away in the whole of his siege.

Miriam was not an easy woman to frighten. She pursed her lips and raised a small black wand, tipped in gold.

“Kyrie,” she said.

Ninety-two voices began to rise in the triumphant opening. Other women ran, ran, dropping whatever last-moment need had delayed them. The clear, high voices rose; steady, powerful, beautiful.